Newspaper Prayers: Friday, October 6th

(This is a long editorial by Nicholas Kristof, who recently traveled to North Korea. The article will give you excellent information to help your prayers for peace in the area. Some excerpts from the article are below.)

To fly into North Korea on an old Russian aircraft is to step into an alternate universe, one in which “the Supreme Leader” defeats craven American imperialists, in which triplets are taken from parents to be raised by the state, in which nuclear war is imminent but survivable — and in which there is zero sympathy for American detainees like Otto Warmbier.

Far more than when I previously visited, North Korea is galvanizing its people to expect a nuclear war with the United States. High school students march in the streets in military uniform every day to denounce America. Posters and billboards along the public roads show missiles destroying the U.S. Capitol and shredding the American flag. In fact, images of missiles are everywhere — in a kindergarten playground, at a dolphin show, on state television. This military mobilization is accompanied by the ubiquitous assumption that North Korea could not only survive a nuclear conflict, but also win it.

Each home or village has a speaker, a link from Big Brother, that drums in propaganda each morning. Religion and civil society are not allowed. Government controls frayed during the terrible famine of the 1990s, when perhaps 10 percent of the population died, but the controls have returned with the economic recovery. This is the most totalitarian state in the history of the world, because it has computers, closed-circuit cameras, mobile phones and other monitoring technologies that Stalin or Mao could only have dreamed of.

Readings from the Prophet Hosea for Friday, October 6, 2017

The book of Hosea ends with the words below. There is no one wiser than God, no one more loving, no one who knows the future with laser precision. If we understand this and base our lives on it, when we are wise. If we step across the line of God’s direction, we will be certain to stumble.

Hosea 14.9 – Those who are wise understand these things; those who are discerning know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.

Prayers for Friday, October 6, 2017

Dear God, please grant us the insight to believe that there is no one who is more right and upright than you.